OCTOBER 5th, 2006The IgNobel 2006 ceremony was held at Sanders Theatre, Harvard University. Quite an event... There were real Nobel price winners, such as last year's Physics price winner Roy Glauber and 1976 Chemistry price winner William Lipscombe. Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractals, was one of the 24/7 lecturers. That means 24 seconds to give a lecture about your research topic in technical terms and then in seven words give a clear, accurate summary. Every now and then hundreds of paper airplanes were dropped from the balcony on the VIP guests who were sitting on the stage. And then swept away with brooms for another drop...

The 2006 IgNobel price winner of the Nutrition price was Wasmia Al-Houty of Kuwait University and Faten Al-Mussalam of the Kuwait Environment Public Authority. The abstract of their research paper states: "Adult dung beetles, Scarabaeus cristatus, consume the fluid components of dung and bury whole dung as food for their larvae. When dung from three herbivorous animals, horse, camel and sheep, was offered, the beetles preferred the more fluid horse dung to the others. Sheep dung was preferred to the camel dung. The dungs of two carnivores, dog and fox, were also accepted but to a lesser extent than the herbivore dung." Congratulations to the winners!

Jyrki succesfully defended his doctoral thesis Homocysteine, folate and cardiovascular diseases (Homokysteiini, folaatti ja sydän- ja verisuonitaudit). Professor Pekka Jousilahti from National Health Institute, Helsinki was the opponent and Dr. Sari Voutilainen the custodian. Congratulations and thanks for a very nice doctoral party, it was first time when polices participated!

Our collaboration project "Antioxidant activity, metabolism and health effects of foods" (METELI) with the Finnish technology agency (Tekes), University of Helsinki and food industry has finished. Main results of the project are presented in the final meeting of the project and as a poster in Tekes's meeting.

APRIL 2005

Jaska was hired as a nutrition expert of KUPS, a traditional football team of Kuopio. Jyrki presented a poster on mercury and heart diseases in FASEB meeting in San Diego.

Miss Finland 2005 was crowned. That day was also the 45th anniversary of the crowning of Miss Finland Tarja Nurmi the second time in a row! Finnish people often recognize the similarity of our chemist and a beauty queen from early 60's, but now it has also been noticed overseas.

Jyrki was invited by the Physicians for Social Responsibility to give a presentation about mercury and CVD in Washington.

Jaakko's (et al.) article "The effects of coffee consumption on lipid peroxidation and plasma total homocysteine concentrations: a clinical trial" was published in the Free Radical Biology & Medicine.

Jaska participated in the XXII International Conference on Polyphenols in Helsinki, Finland. His presentation was "Effects of meal composition on postprandial serum lipids and lipid peroxidation in healthy men: preliminary results from a clinical trial".

JUNE 17-19, 2004

3rd Nordic Conference in Epidemiology was held here in the University of Kuopio. Conference participants came from 18 countries. The most distant attendee was from Chile. Here are some photos from the post-congress boat trip in the Lake Kallavesi to the Timberjack's lodge, where everyone could enjoy from smoke sauna with a swim in a cold lake, good food and live music.

The warmest congratulations to the 20-year old Department of Clinical Nutrition! Tiina, Anu, Jaakko and Jyrki attended the 20th Anniversary Symposium of the Department of Clinical Nutrition, each having a poster presentation.

FEBRUARY 2004

Sari has been re-elected as the Treasurer of the Finnish Epidemiological Society.

Collaboration with the University of Newcastle, UK. Mr. Abdulbaset Nagah from the research group of Dr. Chris Seal is visiting our lab. He is practising analytical methods for lignans as part of his PhD studies. Tarja is supervising him.

MARCH 3-6, 2004

Sari, Tiina and Jyrki will attend the American Heart Association's 44th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention in San Francisco.

NOVEMBER 18, 2003

You can meet Tarja and Jaakko next time at the 1st International Conference on Polyphenols and Health in Vichy, France, November 18-21, 2003. You are invited to visit Tarja's posters and challenge her into scientific discussion. You can check the topic of the poster from our list of abstracts.

Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded at the gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre. Unfortunately we were not on the winners' list. We will do our best again next year!

OCTOBER 1, 2003

Our first article about the effect of nutrition in the development of depression has been published! Way to go, Tommi! Remember to eat vegetables and fruits. Dietary folate and depressive symptoms are associated in middle-aged Finnish men. J Nutr. 2003;133:3233-6.